Abercrombie sues partners in Digital River

Prominent Melbourne businessman
Andrew Abercrombie
is suing his business partners in the company that has put him at the centre of a public controversy over share trades.

Mr Abercrombie is treasurer of the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party and founder and director of the listed company
FlexiGroup
.

He has launched Federal Court action against two directors of Digital River Networks.

According to court documents obtained by The Australian Financial Review, Mr Abercrombie alleges the directors, Brian Evans and Blake Roet, misled him about the assets of Digital River Networks when he invested in the company in 2007.

Mr Roet has filed a formal defence denying all of Mr Abercrombie’s allegations.

In recent weeks Mr Abercrombie has denied any wrongdoing in his purchase of shares in listed information technology company
Amcom
, bought at a time when leaked documents appear to show Digital River Networks was negotiating its potential sale to Amcom.

The basis for the legal action, launched in December, is representations Mr Abercrombie claims were made by Mr Evans and Mr Roet about the state of Digital River Networks as a business.

Mr Abercrombie, whose personal wealth was estimated at more than $400 million in the BRW Rich List, said he was given a PowerPoint presentation in February 2007 which stated the company had the sixth-largest fibre-optic network in Australia and 38 kilometres of so-called dark fibre.